The present invention generally relates to digital media and more specifically to techniques for generating and using playlist identifiers for media objects.
With the rapid growth of computers, an increasing amount of information is being stored in the form of electronic (or digital) documents. These electronic documents include media objects that comprise recorded information. The term “recorded information” is used to refer to information that may comprise information of one or more types. The one or more types may be in some integrated form. For example, recorded information may include one or more of text information, graphics information, animation information, video information, and the like. An example of a media object may be an audio file that includes audio information, such as a digital representation of a song.
As music has become digitalized, portable devices that store media objects, such as songs, have been become very popular. The devices allow local storage of a large number of media objects. The user can then play back the media objects using the devices.
Because of the immense amount of media objects that may be stored on a device, users sometimes desire to organize the media objects. For example, playlists that include a sequence of media objects stored on the device may be created. For example, a hip-hop playlist may be created that includes a number of a user's favorite hip-hop songs that are stored on the device. A second user may see the playlist and may want to use the playlist on their own device. Typically, the second user has to manually create the playlist. However, the second user is limited to creating a playlist using songs stored locally on the second user's device. If all the songs in the playlist are not stored locally, a user would not be able to add that song to the playlist or would have to download the song before adding the song to the playlist.